


Solar Analog

by jsnoopy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Minor Huang Ren Jun/Liu Yang Yang, Minor Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin, Minor Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin, Parallel Universes, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21671185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsnoopy/pseuds/jsnoopy
Summary: He rests his other palm flat over the posters as he runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, imagining what the words would taste like if he bothered to try them out -- would they be sweet, or taste like something he'd wished he'd spit out before trying to swallow?"Parallel universes," he tries.They taste heavy and metallic, like blood trickling into his mouth from a lip split wide open.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno
Comments: 35
Kudos: 127
Collections: ’00 FIC FEST: ROUND ONE





	Solar Analog

**Author's Note:**

> this is for prompt #00134! thank you prompter for such a fun concept! and thank you to Toast who helped me edit some of this <3
> 
> i am not a scientist by any means, so this leans heavily on the fiction part of science fiction. big thanks to the greenbank telescope for existing and inspiring the setting of this story -- check it out because i definitely cannot do the explanations of such a cool thing justice.
> 
> there are so many possibilities for what this fic could have been and this is what it turned out to be, at least in this universe...please enjoy!

**UNIVERSE #37326**

When Jeno’s phone rings for the fourth time in ten minutes, he’s had enough. 

The wind picks up outside, the loose wooden slats on the side of the house slapping noisily, and the heavy rain is starting to make him worry that they might lose power while he still has half an essay to write by his 8 AM class tomorrow. 

Unknown numbers usually would get ignored or sent to voicemail, but the last three times haven’t resulted in a voicemail offering any explanation for this stranger’s urgency, so Jeno breaks his unwritten rules and answers.

“What is the emergency?” Jeno snaps. Lightning cracks the sky outside, lighting his room with a menacing flash. It’s a very satisfying touch to the drama.

 _“Where the hell are you?_ ” The person on the other line snaps back at him. _“I’m getting soaked, you were supposed to pick me up half an hour ago!”_

Jeno frowns. “Who is this?”

The only response is silence, the white noise of rain on the street. They must be in the same town, the area code was the same, and it’s raining just as bad here. Jeno imagines the sound of rain traveling all the way up to some satellite, bouncing back down to him in his room -- all that distance and they’re probably only a few blocks away.

 _“Hyuck?”_ The person, _Hyuck,_ replies finally. _“Is this Jaemin?”_

Jeno’s frown deepens. He knows all of Jaemin’s friends because they’re all _his_ friends, and he doesn’t know anyone named ‘Hyuck.’ Even if they didn’t share this mutual connection, there aren’t enough people around here for there to be a stranger. 

“If you know Jaemin, you know this isn’t his number,” Jeno says. 

_“Oh. I thought-- This is for sure Jaemin’s number.”_

Jeno resists the nagging urge to investigate this situation. He has _stuff_ to do. “Well, this isn’t Jaemin. It’s Jeno.”

And, that should be explanation enough. 

Apparently it isn’t.

 _“Am I supposed to know who that is?_ ”

Jeno blinks at his computer screen. The cursor blinks back at him.

Jaemin is his _best friend_ . They’re a pair. Of _course_ anyone who knows Jaemin knows Jeno.

 _“Hello?"_ Hyuck calls, his voice breaking as thunder booms, shaking Jeno’s house.

“Listen, _Hyuck_ , whoever you are,” Jeno sighs, “you’ve got the wrong number. Just call an Uber or something.”

It doesn’t make sense even as the words leave his mouth, and he knows it. Ridesharing isn’t a viable option in the Rural Nowhere Mountains. He’s only seen people use those apps on TV shows, and once on vacation. That city magic of convenience and accessibility.

“ _Can you just give me Jaemin’s number then?_ ”

Jeno scoffs. As if. He’d never hear the end of it if he gave Jaemin’s cell to a stranger over the phone. “Yeah...no. Good luck, though.”

He hangs up before Hyuck can reply, tossing his phone underhand onto his mattress. It bounces, nearly diving off the edge, but settles before he can regret it. 

He doesn’t have a lot of time to finish this paper, design some flyers for the upcoming pipeline protest, and turn in before his alarm clock goes off. When the power goes out, the lights flickering once, twice, before dying altogether, Jeno only screams once -- nobody can blame him for that. 

  
  


Per his usual Monday routine, Jeno ends up seeking out his best friend between classes. 

Today, Jaemin is scheduled to work at his work-study job in the library, so Jeno drops his backpack behind the circulation desk and follows him down to the basement to watch him make copies.

The basement is the perfect place to pretend to study with your friends, since there are only a few tables and the door to the archives is always closed -- no one to disturb, and it’s two floors away from the designated quiet area. 

It’s also the perfect place for Jeno and Jaemin to gossip about their classmates, although Jeno would never admit to it. He has too much pride. 

Jaemin, however, would offer up information to any passing stranger. They balance each other out.

“Do you know anyone named Hyuck?” Jeno asks. 

Jaemin bobs his head to the song playing through his singular AirPod (the other lost somewhere probably in the toilet). Jeno can’t tell if he’s nodding or shaking his head.

He doesn’t answer until he’s pressed all the right buttons to input the settings for the print job, only then tilting his head to survey Jeno. “Hyuck? What kind of name is that?” 

Jeno shrugs, his arms crossed over his chest as he perches on the edge of one of the nearby tables. “Don’t know. Never mind.”

He knew that it was just a prank call, just another stupid guy trying to waste his precious time, although not in the way it usually came about.

Despite the rumors, Jeno was _not_ uptight. He was just...busy, and he liked it that way.

“Can you print some stuff for me?” He asks, before Jaemin can think too hard about it and break something.

“Yeah,” Jaemin drawls out, slow. “Eco shit?”

“Great way to describe your best friend’s life’s work.”

“Whatever,” Jaemin says. He takes the USB drive Jeno passes him and pockets it. “What’s in it for me?”

Jeno’s never surprised. This is the game, one they’ve been playing for at least a decade. “What do you want?”

“Can I bring a date?”

Oh _God_. “To a protest?” Jeno asks, just to be sure. “About protecting our fragile environment from disgusting, greedy corporations and our corrupt government?”

Jaemin cocks his head. “You say that like it’s not romantic.”

“Fine,” Jeno relents, “bring a date.”

It’s not that big of a deal. After all, Jaemin shows up to every event Jeno plans without fail. It’s not Jaemin’s problem that Jeno’s alone.

  
  


Jeno doesn’t have any classes on Wednesdays or Fridays, which makes them the best time to complete the majority of his internship hours. Two six-hour days and he completes the remaining eight remotely, designing educational pamphlets for K-5 events and replying to the minuscule amount of social media engagement that comes through Twitter and Facebook.

He shakes his umbrella out ineffectively while wiping his sneakers on the mat inside the door, faded, but once bright with the shapes of stars. Rain drips off the tip of the umbrella onto the tiled floor as he crosses from the entrance to the gift shop. 

The place is nearly empty, but it always is. Jeno’s never once seen the concession stand gate rolled up, although the sign proclaiming HOT DOGS, NACHOS, and COCA-COLA still stands outside it. Across the sea of empty tables, a family with three young kids peeks out the two-story window looking out over the back of the mountain.

Jeno continues into the gift shop. 

Yangyang sits behind the register, resting his chin in his hand as his thumb swipes down over his phone screen. Probably scrolling through Instagram or something equally important. His elbow is resting on a stack of new posters proclaiming “PARALLEL UNIVERSES” that crease in the center from his weight.

Yangyang’s too sweet to deserve Jeno’s mental judgment, even if he is Ten’s favorite, which means he must be a demon on the inside, as well as guaranteed a job for life at the Observatory, qualifications be damned.

“Anything new on the agenda?” Jeno asks as he enters.

Yangyang looks up, clearly relieved to have some form of company, even if Jeno and he have never talked much before, aside from a few times in high school where they ran into each other at parties and now here.

“The Docs are all upset,” Yangyang says.

There are a few reasons that could be. One, that their usual bickering took a nasty turn and left one of them sleeping on the couch. The second, that something’s wrong with the satellite, which always leaves them both in a grumpy mood. 

Unfortunately, it’s the second. Work-related bad moods are much less amusing than silly argument related ones.

“The storm knocked something loose and all the readings are off now,” Yangyang explains, leaning over the counter the register sits on to peer at the family still wandering around. “Hey, do you want to ask if they’re going to take a tour? Last one’s in half an hour.”

The schedule they run on is illogical, considering the lack of visitors to the observatory a set schedule is useless. Most days, there are no tours whatsoever, and the only time they run multiple are the days when the local elementary and middle schools bus in for a field trip.

Still, Jeno dutifully goes to ask, allowing himself to fall victim to fielding science questions he has no business answering whatsoever.

Ten rescues the family from him before Jeno can spread anymore lies about radio waves and the universe. Jeno’s more grateful than they are.

He resigns himself back to the gift shop, opening his laptop to where he left off on his latest Marketing assignment. Just another uneventful day to tick off in the countdown to graduation, it bleeds into all the rest.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #9298**

Donghyuck’s day starts with a bang. Literally.

The kitchen doors, both screen and solid wood, located conveniently beside Donghyuck’s bedroom wall, slam shut and startle him out of uneasy sleep.

It’s probably his mother, going out to the porch for her morning smoke. Some days, the organic alarm sets a storm of irritated thoughts loose in his brain, free to knock down his carefully constructed Positive Boundaries. This morning, however, every thought is too slow, too tired, his body sluggish and cold as he pries his eyelids open to blink back against the assault of the morning sun coming through the slots of his broken blinds. 

It’s going to be a _day_ , he realizes, minutes later, when he finds that his white sneakers are covered in mud and grass stains from his tramp through the streets on his way home last night, or, more correctly, just a few hours ago.

They’re going to be a _bitch_ to clean, but he’ll deal with it later -- they’ll have to get worse before they get better.

Renjun’s sat low in the driver’s seat when Donghyuck swings his bag into the ‘94 Ford Ranger. Its red paint is, as Renjun words it, _lovingly worn_ , and the sight of it outside Donghyuck’s place is familiar and comforting. 

Renjun ashes his cigarette out the window. He only ever smokes a couple drags from it in the morning, the smell enough to soothe his raw edges. The cigarette, the truck, the pride flag on a camo hoodie -- that’s _Renjun_. 

“Forget your booster seat?” Donghyuck asks as he slides into his seat. The cushion is practically molded to his ass, which is 95% of the time the only occupant of the Ranger’s passenger side.

“You look really ugly this morning, Hyuck,” Renjun says, taking his foot off the brake and pulling away from the yard before Donghyuck has even closed the door. “It must be nice when your insides and outsides match.”

“Oh, it’s super relaxing,” Donghyuck says, “nothing to prove.”

The day really only gets worse from there. 

He attends class, dutifully offers his opinion in discussions, and gets shot down every time, a few of his classmates snickering in the back of the room. He races to turn in a paper at his professor’s office, just to find that they’ve already left for the day. He takes an economics exam, and almost certainly fails.

When he meets up with Renjun again, the day has beaten him into painful submission to its cruelty. Whatever Positive Thoughts he’d tried to conjure on the drive to college, meditating to Renjun’s favorite classics radio station, have abandoned him. 

He tried to face the wolves alone and was nearly eaten alive. Again.

Luckily, he has the evening to look forward to.

They don’t go straight for the house party, but pull into their favorite spot off the road, along the edge of the mountains, where the Ranger just fits between the creeping flora.

Renjun leans back against the driver’s door while Donghyuck clambers into the bed of the truck, hanging his arms and head over the side. 

Between long chugs of cool beer, he peers down the decline of the mountain. The bottom disappears with the sun until all he can see is _dark_ and his head swims from cold air he sucks in between drinks.

Some days there’s nothing that can shut either of them up, but they’ve been friends long enough that they’re comfortable with necessary silence. Renjun knows when Donghyuck’s too tense to shoot the breeze, and Donghyuck can tell when Renjun’s preoccupied by the rawness of his bitten lips or the number of cigarettes he lights that burn down before he’s remembered to take even one drag. 

Something about Donghyuck’s eyes must show the sort of day he’s had -- maybe the pinched skin between his brows, or the way he can’t quite make himself look at Renjun without feeling an unfair amount of resentment.

If he’s honest, Donghyuck hates that he’s still stuck here with no way out, with the same people he’s known his whole life. He hates that Renjun knows everything about him and that his lying skills are useless in the face of his best friend. He hates that Renjun knows there are some days that he hates him.

Donghyuck isn’t a good enough person to deserve a friend like that, who _knows_ and stays, who cracks open another can and passes it to him as soon as he finishes one.

Maybe the guilt is what prohibits Donghyuck from getting too mad when Renjun splits as soon as they arrive at the house party, disappears into the crowd of too familiar faces without a second glance back at him. 

Donghyuck heads into the kitchen to pour himself another drink, smiling politely at the former high school classmates he bumps into along the way.

Jaemin finds him there, and knocks the bill of Donghyuck’s cap up with his knuckles as he crowds into his space. 

“I was wondering if you’d show up,” Jaemin says. His eyes sparkle mischievously even under the dim, yellow light of the kitchen, but Donghyuck has a grudge to hold.

Donghyuck turns his face away, bringing his cup to his lips, not to drink but to place something between Jaemin’s mouth and his own, just in case they both get distracted. “Were you?”

Like Renjun, Jaemin is too familiar with Donghyuck’s attitude. It’s only more grating that he isn’t bothered by the Donghyuck’s tone, which he wants to mean _leave me alone_ and _say sorry_.

“I lost you last night,” Jaemin murmurs. 

“Weird,” Donghyuck says, “maybe if you’d answered the phone you’d have found me.”

Jaemin huffs out a low laugh. “Maybe if you’d called, I would’ve answered.”

 _I did call_ , Donghyuck thinks, but he bites his tongue. Better than give him the satisfaction of an argument. Their fights always end in Donghyuck’s face red and hot while Jaemin stands there with a grin before he gives in to taunting Donghyuck with a kiss that can pull Donghyuck’s thoughts in another direction. 

He isn’t in the mood to be teased tonight. It isn’t as fun as it used to be.

“Come on, Lee,” Jaemin says, resting his hands on Donghyuck’s hip, “relax.”

Donghyuck has enough room to step back before he’s backed into the counter, so he does, shifting successfully out of Jaemin’s touch. If the other boy tries to follow, he may snap.

“I have to find Renjun,” Donghyuck says. 

It’s a successful half-truth, and the excuse he leans on whenever he’s not up for Jaemin’s company. Renjun can’t stand Donghyuck’s regular hook up, and Renjun is far chillier than Donghyuck can manage to be himself. It’s a perfect Jaemin-deterrent. 

It’s not hard to find him — his Renjun-radar pulls him toward the back porch. He doesn’t see him at first until a boy in a backwards snapback steps to the side, laughing loudly with a wide wolfish grin — there’s Yangyang, an ever-present thorn in his side. 

He guesses he might feel the same way about Yangyang as Renjun feels about Jaemin, and it’s funny that they all used to be friends before years of codependency reared their jealous heads. 

Growing up changes everything. Suddenly, people you never saw see each other, and you just have to sit back and watch.

“Get lost, Hyuck?” Yangyang asks when he spots him.

Donghyuck resists the urge to roll his eyes, knowing it’ll only trigger Renjun into a biting argument later. But he’s already had enough of this place. He wants to go, wants to find somewhere he and Renjun can chill together without the rest of these lame-ass kids they’ve been hanging out with their whole lives. 

The energy of the party is stale and leaves Donghyuck’s mouth watering for something more he can sink his teeth into – maybe they can drive over to the next town, it’s only an hour, and at least the people there are interesting enough to capture his attention, strange and distant enough for him to successfully forget them the next day.

“I saw Jaemin go inside a minute ago,” Yangyang supplies helpfully when Donghyuck’s silence draws on too long.

Donghyuck nods his head to Renjun, making his eyes big and meaningful until his best friend can’t miss what he wants.

Renjun looks at him and sips his drink slowly. He takes his time swallowing, smacking his lips a few times. “He’s probably looking for you.”

“Same shit,” Donghyuck says. “Having fun?”

Renjun’s lips twist like he doesn’t want to smile, like it gives too much away, but he can’t help how his gaze flicks to Yangyang, how heat creeps up his neck to his cheeks when Yangyang meets his gaze and breaks into a wide, generous grin.

Donghyuck gets the picture. He doesn’t need to stick around. 

Something in his stomach burns and rolls in waves at the way they look at each other, but it’s something he’ll tuck away and try to forget. Suddenly going back into the house and finding Jaemin doesn’t sound so bad. At least Jaemin’s hands will be warm when they pinch Donghyuck’s cheeks as he teases him for his sulky fit. At least being touched by someone will make the night feel a little less cold.

Donghyuck smiles at his best friend. They both know it’s not real, but Renjun’s willing to pretend he doesn’t, so Donghyuck will, too.

He waves to them both, forcing himself to nod at Yangyang as a goodbye.

He can’t force himself to go back inside just yet. He almost makes it, but turns abruptly at the threshold of the door, going around the side of the house into the yard. He doesn’t think Renjun sees him go – if he does, he doesn’t follow.

He presses his thumb down onto Jaemin’s contact. The option goes gray, waiting for his decision. Should he slide his finger away, let the night sweep him away alone, or let himself make the call, try to regain some control?

It’s against his better judgement, but he lifts his thumb and raises his cell to his ear, closing his eyes as he listens to the ring.

In the time it takes for the call to be answered, Donghyuck imagines all the scenarios that would prevent Jaemin from picking up – the other people inside the party who vie for his attention, an eye roll at the sight of Donghyuck’s contact flashing on Jaemin’s phone screen after his fit in the kitchen. 

But it is answered, and Donghyuck allows himself to relax his shoulders, lolling his head back as he looks up at the stars glinting in the night sky.

“Hey,” he says before Jaemin can speak, “can you come out? We can go somewhere else.”

“ _You again?_ ” 

And it’s not Jaemin at all, but the same guy from last night, who hung up while Donghyuck was drowning in the downpour of that awful storm. He wants to snap back at him, but finds that he can’t find the tension necessary to say anything truly biting.

“Me again,” he relents.

“ _What’s the sob story this time?_ ”

Donghyuck’s lips twist, tugging down. He closes his eyes, but the stars remain etched into the inside of his eyelids. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lonely.”

Silence reigns on the other line, and Donghyuck wonders if it was too honest for a second conversation with a stranger. It’s so easy to tell the truth when he can’t see the judgment play out right in front of him, when he can’t see the disappointment heavy in the lines of his mother’s face, or the exhaustion in Renjun’s smile as Donghyuck tells the same jokes, years too old for them.

On the phone, with this boy, he feels everything bubbling into his mouth, pressing along the seam of his lips. If he doesn’t keep his mouth shut, it’ll all spill out. No doubt it will be a mess, and there’s no one around to clean it up but Donghyuck himself. But he’s used to that.

“ _This isn’t Jaemin’s number_ ,” the boy says.

Donghyuck waits for him to hang up.

“ _But_ ,” he continues, “ _um, why don’t you tell me about your day?_ ”

It’s Donghyuck’s turn to fall silent, his brain taking the time to catch up to this point in the conversation. He was already lost when the number reached the wrong person again — and he _knows_ it’s the right number, still has Jaemin’s last ‘ _u up?_ ’ text in the message thread. 

“ _Or not,_ ” the stranger says when Donghyuck doesn’t reply, “ _we can talk about something else. Or nothing. I just figured if you wanted to talk to someone...I’m not Jaemin, but._ ”

Maybe it’s better that he’s not Jaemin after all.

“I had an exam,” Donghyuck manages once he gets his tongue working again. The words come out a little strained, and he clears his throat. “An economics exam.”

The stranger hums. “ _How’d it go?_ ”

“Awful,” Donghyuck says. He thinks back on the events of his day, everything piling up one thing after another. He opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, and it’s an easy decision. 

Now that he’s let himself start talking, he’s not sure he can stop. So he tells him. 

“Sorry for talking so much,” Donghyuck says after a while. He’s not sure how much time has passed, but he knows it can take a while for him to get through his stories when he’s venting, especially with how often he gets sidetracked.

“ _I don’t mind. It’s...entertaining. You are, I mean._ ”

Donghyuck laughs a little. “Thanks, I guess. Um. Can I ask you something?”

A quiet noise of surprise, but there isn’t the same hesitant silence that held up their conversation for the first few minutes. “ _Yes_.”

“What’s your name?”

A laugh — and it’s a nice laugh, one that crawls under Donghyuck’s skin and warms his night-cool skin. 

“ _J_ _eno_ ,” the boy says, “ _I didn’t say it before?_ ”

“No,” Donghyuck murmurs. “You were pretty busy being a jerk.”

“ _Sounds like you like jerks,_ ” Jeno says.

He might. But he likes the way Jeno asks him questions and means them. 

Everyone he knows has known him for so long that questions about himself are pointless -- but he’s changed so much, the idea of change in his static hometown unbelievable but true. Maybe he’s been able to ignore that, functioning in his newness in privacy, but now he feels these new parts breaking out of him. At such simple questions from a stranger.

It’s too much for him. 

Donghyuck licks his lips, rolls his eyes up to the stars hanging over him. “What are you doing right now?”

A deflection, but he’s talked enough about himself.

“ _I’m at a study group._ ”

“Oh god,” Donghyuck says, “sorry.”

“ _No_ ,” Jeno laughs again, “ _you saved me. I needed some fresh air anyway._ ”

“It’s a nice night,” Donghyuck says.

“ _Are you outside? The stars are really bright._ ”

They always are, Donghyuck thinks, out here far from light pollution, but the sentiment still makes him smile. “Yeah. What’s your favorite?”

Jeno makes a sound like he doesn’t quite understand, so Donghyuck amends his questions, adding quickly, “Star. Your favorite star.”

“ _I don’t think I have one. Do you?_ ”

“Of course,” Donghyuck murmurs, “Arcturus.”

“ _Which one’s that?_ ” Jeno asks.

“It’s the Bear Guard, or the Dragon, or Icarus. It depends on who you ask. Just follow the arc from the handle of the Big Dipper.” Donghyuck waits a moment for Jeno to follow his instructions before continuing. “Find it?”

“ _Maybe_.”

“It’s bright,” Donghyuck adds.

“ _Duh. It’s a star._ ”

“Ah, an attitude,” Donghyuck says. “So cute. You asked.”

“ _You asked,_ ” Jeno reminds him.

“I just wanted to know more about you,” Donghyuck says. 

He regrets the admission as it passes over his tongue, too much at once, too soon for a conversation with a near-stranger over the phone. He’s spent years perfecting the slip of his heart off his sleeve and away from prying eyes, and he’s forgotten himself too quickly.

Jeno either doesn’t notice the slip-up or is kind enough not to tease him for it. “ _There’s not much to say. I’m definitely not interesting enough to have a favorite star or anything._ ”

“We can fix that.”

He doesn’t expect Jeno to agree, to ask his opinion as if Donghyuck has the ability to spew out an answer like a Buzzfeed quiz set to predict his future. 

He doesn’t expect most of what Jeno says, how he responds to Donghyuck’s usual quips with a level of surprise that Donghyuck hasn’t been granted since he was in middle school. 

Everything’s so familiar in this place, everyone he knows is etched into his eyelids -- he could spend a whole day with his eyes closed and not trip once. To be unpredictable makes his heart jump in his chest.

He likes this, he decides, and he doesn’t mind being physically alone for once, because suddenly, with Jeno’s voice filtering through his phone to his ear, he’s not so lonely.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #37326**

The day before what Jeno secretly believes is going to be the most monumental day of his life, he leaves his phone at home.

It’s not purposeful. As much as he would hate to admit dependence on any technology, his hand feels uncomfortably empty the whole day, and he takes to staring at his classmates more than usual without a palm-sized screen to occupy his mind when he needs a distraction. 

Had his TA always had that mole? 

Did that noisy chewer in his composition class dye her hair recently, or had it always looked like that? 

By the end of the day, he’s tired of all the observations he’s begun to make about the people he usually blocks from anywhere but his peripheral vision.

Still, it’ll be another three hours before he can drive home, and he resigns himself to get some work down on his clunky laptop while he can still avoid the temptation of scrolling endlessly through mind-numbing social media posts. It was no doubt a boring day for everyone on his timeline, the same as any other, but it’s all about balance.

“Up for a ride-along?”

Jeno looks up from his laptop to see Dr. Qian – Kun – standing on the other side of the counter. 

His tie is done neatly, tight around his collar, but his heavy nametag droops toward the floor, tilted so that no one would be able to see it. Good thing no one comes around much, and if they do they don’t really care to speak to the scientists at work.

“Now?” Jeno asks.

A ride-along with Kun and Ten means that he won’t get much of his projects done while he’s here. He depends on the time sitting in the empty, desolate gift shop to complete his work for his internship so that he can focus on his actual schoolwork when at home, but it’s tempting. His brain feels fried after this morning.

“We’re heading out in about five if you want to run to the restroom,” Kun offers.

Jeno considers it for thirty more seconds and decides to trust his instincts for once, even if it means more work later. He drags his finger over his touchpad and clicks _Save File_ about five times before closing his laptop.

Kun smiles. It’s a nice smile. He’s a nice guy. Ten must be lucky.

The thought almost makes Jeno pull a face, even though it came from his brain and his brain alone. 

He doesn't really want to think about his bosses’ relationship. It’s pretty obvious, but they’re also pretty old. Anyone over thirty in love is just tragically domestic, he thinks, despite his lingering desire to be able to fall asleep next to someone who loves him. 

How comforting that must be, he muses sometimes, late at night, when the world feels too big and too small at the same time, and he’s the only person awake in the whole universe.

His pockets feel too light suddenly, and he itches to use his phone, to check his messages. It’s too bad he left it at home on his nightstand.

Ten’s leaning back against the van when Jeno and Kun reach him, big sunglasses covering his eyes. His jaw moves with the motion of chewing gum. He looks more like a cool pilot than an astrophysicist. 

Jeno considers telling him for a moment – could it be considered ass-kissing? Better not. He doesn’t want to risk the Yangyang’s smug look if Ten praises him for his compliment in public. Complimenting Ten is like giving up, it’ll make him smile, but it won’t earn his respect.

“You brought company,” Ten hums.

“He looked bored,” Kun replies, opening the driver's side door. The hinges creak deafeningly.

Jeno grimaces at the sound and climbs in the back.

They all leave it there, getting settled before they check the radio scanner.

The work at the Observatory is highly sensitive. Outside the main building, which is protected by a “cage” that Jeno can’t begin to understand, there’s a radius some specific amount of miles wide that requires a lack of technology. 

It’s why Jeno lives so far away, why it takes an hour and a half to make it to the Observatory from school. If the smallest electrical circuit goes haywire, the satellite can pick up on it, and it distorts their findings from the Great Beyond. 

That’s what leads to the ride-along, what prompts two of the resident full-time physicists to clamber out of their dark rooms and away from their ancient monitors and enter society if only to take away broken toaster-ovens and electric toothbrushes. 

They replace them, of course. The residents of the surrounding area inside the radius are always fond of the days the Observatory van rumbles along the road and stops in front of their house. It means that they get something brand new.

“It’s a little far,” Ten says after examining the scanner for a moment as Kun backs out of the parking spot. “Must be a pretty strong signal.” 

They drive down the winding mountain roads, descending in the direction of the town Jeno himself lives in. He almost regrets leaving his things behind -- if this takes long enough, they could’ve just dropped him off at home -- but it’s a dumb thought, considering he drove himself to the Observatory and would have no way of getting anywhere without his car.

The men in the front seat speak low between themselves and the hum of their voices does little to stop Jeno from drifting off, his forehead pressed to the window. He only becomes alert again when he feels the motion of the van stop.

He blinks quickly to clear the sleep from his eyes. He peers out the tinted windows, but there’s nothing to see, just the steep drop off the side of the mountain where Kun pulled over.

Ten smacks the radio scanner with the heel of his palm, shaking it when nothing changes. “I swear, there was a stronger signal than this one.”

“Maybe whatever it was started working again?” Kun suggests.

His blind guess goes ignored. Ten shakes the scanner again, hard, muttering under his breath.

“How many doctorates does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Jeno murmurs to himself, leaning his forehead against the window again.

“What a piece of shit,” Ten says under his breath.

Kun places his hand over Ten’s knee, squeezing his leg gently. Jeno can hear the long sigh that Ten exhales, but can’t see his face from his place behind his seat.

They stay quiet for the whole drive back to the Observatory.

  
  


He falls into bed when he gets home, suddenly too lazy to think about getting any real work done. Instead, he rolls over to retrieve his phone from where he left it charging on the nightstand. 

There’s not much to see -- a few Twitter notifications, a series of texts from his mother that get colder the longer she believed he was ignoring her. He doesn’t open the texts from Jaemin, bypassing them to select the unsaved number in his recent calls list.

 _Feel better?_ He types.

He muses over the message for a few minutes before sending it. It’s not important enough for him to spend this much time thinking about -- so why does the immediacy of the three dots popping up under his text make his stomach flip flop?

 _Now I do_.

A slow smile spreads over Jeno’s lips. He can play this game -- it’s the sort that doesn’t need a winner, but he knows he’ll win, regardless.

  
  


Maybe if it were raining, the moment would feel much more melodramatic, but something prevents Jeno from waking up in his usual stormy mood that accompanies his quest for environmental justice.

Instead, he opens his bedroom curtains to feel the sun warm his skin, unlocks his phone, and smiles.

_Good luck with your protest today, wish I could make it!!_

_Thanks_ , Jeno texts back, _feel better soon._

He ponders over sending a cute, blushing emoji for much longer than necessary before finally deciding it’s a little too much. He doesn’t want to come on too strong, especially since he barely knows Hyuck. Maybe he should slow his roll before the guy gets a creepy vibe from him and ghosts him before they even meet?

Whoa. Meeting is a lot to think about when they just spoke a few nights ago.

Jeno shakes his head, firmly telling himself _no_. This is why he doesn’t have a relationship to begin with -- it’s so distracting.

(And there’s, like, 0 people he could even think about here, except, like, _Hyuck_.)

He sets his phone aside to continue getting ready, the knowledge that whatever happens today he’ll still have this boy to text more relaxing than he knows it should be.

His university is small enough and apathetic enough that Jeno doesn’t expect a huge turnout to the demonstration he organized. It’s enough for him that the few regulars show up and bring their friends along. A freshman, Chenle, brought his high school friend along. Since Jisung is skipping school to be there, Jeno can’t even be annoyed about the Physics homework he keeps in his lap at all times, even when he’s playing a game on his phone.

They hand out a few informational flyers about the negative consequences of the proposed pipeline -- the contamination to drinking water and air quality, the issues of eminent domain and how it’ll affect them, their neighbors, their families. 

It’s the first time since Jeno has started his mission that nobody has crumpled up the flyers in front of him at least. If he can’t see them toss the papers in the trash bins, maybe it doesn’t happen. 

When he sees Jaemin, he’s surprised. Surprised, though, is an understatement to the feeling he gets at the sight of his best friend with Renjun.

It’s not the camo hoodie that throws Jeno off since it’s the same one Renjun’s been wearing since they were in little league together. In fact, it’s the same one he wore the night he gave Jeno his first kiss, during a game of spin the bottle in seventh grade that left Jeno’s ears hot and Renjun’s smile wide and mischievous. 

It’s not his looks either -- Renjun’s pretty as anyone. That makes sense, too, since Jaemin loved pretty things and pretty people.

But to Jeno’s knowledge, the last time Renjun and Jaemin spoke was a few nights before graduation when a heated argument at Yangyang’s end of the year bash led to Jaemin drunkenly threatening to slash the tires of Renjun’s beloved ‘94 Ford Ranger.

So how did Jaemin manage to be riding in the passenger seat of the same Ranger, his hair tousled from the wind blowing through the open windows and who knows what else as they pulled into the parking lot?

“I brought the press,” Jaemin says by way of greeting.

Jeno smiles at the both of them, though he cuts Jaemin a look that he hopes says he wants the details of this as soon as possible. Jaemin avoids looking directly at him, which means it does. It also means he has the space to push him further.

“I thought you were bringing a date.”

Renjun doesn’t blink twice, he just slides his phone out of his pocket. “Is it okay if I record?”

“Record what?”

“The interview,” Renjun says, “for the school paper.”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Jaemin murmurs in Jeno’s ear.

Jeno’s no idiot. Jaemin’s eyes wander wherever Renjun goes. If anything, helping Jeno is an added bonus. “Recording is fine.”

Jeno wears a few hats -- communications intern, student, aspiring environmental activist. It’s not often he can dust off his future politician cap, so he appreciates the soapbox Renjun offers him as he holds his phone up between them, little red lines on the screen showing that he’s already started to record by the time Jeno agrees. 

It’s over soon enough, but the high from the attention, however minimal, however much Renjun doesn’t seem like he’s actually listening to Jeno’s talking points, balloons in his chest for the rest of the afternoon. 

He can’t even be bothered by Jaemin lounging beside Jisung in the grass, flyers abandoned at his side as the biggest Economics lecture is let out of the day and students fill the lawn. He’s not helpful, but he showed up. And isn’t worming his way into the good graces of one of the only journalism and communications students on-campus supportive enough?

 _Still at home?_ Jeno texts Hyuck as he scans the students filtering out of the building. He doesn’t know what Hyuck looks like, but he feels like he’d know if he spotted him, like a gut instinct he was born with.

_Yeah but how’d it go!_

Jeno smiles down at his phone until Jaemin swats his arm, apparently risen from the dead as he stands beside him.

“What are you smiling at?”

Jeno meets Jaemin’s suspicious gaze and shrugs. “Nothing. Mom’s making spaghetti for dinner.”

It feels wrong to lie. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s kept the truth from Jaemin, and this one makes it dangerously close to two hands. He’s never had many reasons to before. 

Except now, he’s not sure what the truth is. It's possible Jaemin would be able to parse it out for him, but then maybe that’s not the truth he wants.

Maybe he’s okay lying for a little while longer if the vibration of his phone in his palm keeps him on his high.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #9298**

Jeno’s an environmental studies and communications major. He wants to write about sustainability and politics and stick it to the man. 

Donghyuck asks, then, how he ended up working at the Observatory, and he laughs it off as simple nepotism, with one of his bosses owing his brother a favor, along with the fact that nobody else really ever applies. 

Donghyuck has to bite his tongue. He applied. Donghyuck, the future astrophysicist. But it’s great that he was worse for the position than someone who knows nothing about the Observatory. He doesn’t think about how it makes his throat burn when Jeno texts him complaining about work.

Luckily, that’s not all they talk about and Jeno has a sense of humor that goes beyond complaining. Over the weeks, _Hyuck_ allows himself to become _Donghyuck_ and they peel away the superficial small talk to reveal everything, anything that comes to mind, even the ugly parts.

“Sometimes I just get so caught up in everything, I forget to do, like, basic human stuff, you know?” Jeno tells him one night. “I can go all day without a meal, or stay up for three days and not even notice, ‘cause there’s so much to do, I want to do it all.”

Donghyuck’s chest aches for him. He wishes he could remind him to take care of himself without overstepping. He wants to be there with him, to take care of him himself. 

But they’re never even met before. 

Neither one of them have brought it up, the unlikelihood that neither of them has seen each other, especially not on their small college campus where everyone seems to know everyone. 

Somedays, Donghyuck wonders if he's the only one that cares enough to think about it. Maybe Jeno doesn’t think about him like that, maybe he’s just an easy distraction from homework and the building stress that accompanies the inevitable associate’s degree pushing them both closer to leaving this place for good.

“ _I think I have a favorite star,_ ” Jeno reveals to him one night.

Donghyuck suppresses a grin even though Jeno wouldn’t be able to see it, rolling over in his bed to face his open window. The stars are so bright they twinkle in the reflection of his mirror on the wall across from it -- the moon lights up his room with a blue glow.

“What is it?” Donghyuck asks.

“ _I want to show you._ ”

“I think I will probably know it,” Donghyuck says before he realizes. 

Then, he thinks, _Are you sure?_

“ _I’d rather show you myself._ ”

“Okay,” Donghyuck agrees. He winces when his voice comes out all breathy, like he’s desperate to meet him. 

He is, but Jeno doesn’t need to know that.

  
  


Donghyuck doesn't wake up, because he's never able to fall asleep. 

He spends the time twisting in his sheets, unbearably warm, then too cold, too nervous, too much in his head for his body to relax and let itself rest. The morning comes painfully slow, but when it does, he's too tired of laying there to recognize his real exhaustion. 

He gets up before his alarm goes off, and watches the sunrise through the crack of his open curtains. He's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost doesn't notice his phone light up with a text notification -- but it would take a lot for him not to notice his texts these days. 

The feeling of his phone vibrating against his thigh, tucked into his pocket away from prying eyes and a suspicious Renjun, has begun to give Donghyuck sick pavlovian thrills. 

It shouldn’t be so exciting, a few text messages, but it’s not the messages themselves that have goosebumps trailing up Donghyuck’s neck every time he feels the vibration. It’s the boy.

And when he thinks about Jeno, he can’t help but be happy.

He grins before he even opens the message.

_Excited?_

Jeno _knows_ him, down to his bones. It's embarrassing how thrilled that makes him, how he shivers with anticipation of the day ahead of him.

_Still too long to wait. We should've met earlier!_

Their college isn't that big. It’s shocking enough that they haven't accidentally run into each other over the months they've both been attending classes, but even more so now that Donghyuck has spent so much of his time listening for the all too familiar voice. Unfortunately, they’re both still too nervous to send pictures of themselves. 

Donghyuck has been struggling daily with respecting that boundary, keeping himself from looking him up on the school directory. But all of that will hopefully be worth it now as this experiment in patience and _taking it slow_ comes to an end. By six pm, he'll know his face. It’s the final piece of the puzzle.

Until then, he has the whole day to prepare himself.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

Donghyuck ignores his mother’s concerned face peeking into the laundry room and instead considers the heaping scoop of detergent in his hand. He dumps it into the washing machine with finality. 

His mother makes a quiet, strangled noise from behind him. 

“I’ve got it,” Donghyuck says because Positive Thinking is the first step to confidence.

He’d woken up early enough to start on his unending amount of laundry, but apparently not early enough to escape the notice of his mom. Most sons would be praised for making the effort to clean up a little, but his mother just takes it as a suspicious red flag.

Maybe she thinks he murdered someone and is destroying the evidence. He bites back his amusement. A smile this early would be even more worrying.

“What are you up to today?” She asks.

Donghyuck turns to leave the laundry room, but she stands in the doorway, blocking his way with her coffee cup held with both hands in front of her chest. She searches his face but is sufficiently embarrassed when he catches her at it.

Donghyuck rubs his fingers over his chin. He has some stubble growing over his jaw, but not enough to be proud of – he should take care of that before he heads out. “I have a date.”

“Jaemin?”

It’s not a wild guess, but it sticks in Donghyuck’s throat like glue. He has to laugh to break his vocal cords open again. “Not him.”

“Do I know him?”

“Later, mom,” Donghyuck says as he manages to slip past her, leaving the washing machine rumbling and his mother grumbling behind him.

He should’ve started his laundry last night, because once he showers and shaves he still has half an hour left on the dryer cycle. He spends the time peering into the hallway mirror, picking at dry spots on his face, and attempting to clip his toenails without losing an eye.

Texting Renjun would be his go-to, except for how he hasn’t told him about Jeno. It would be a bad idea to start now. Besides, he’s probably busy. He’s probably with Yangyang or something.

Despite the empty pit in Donghyuck’s stomach connected to the lack of surprises in his hometown, he’s found that he’s not fond of the distance growing between himself and his best friend. 

When Renjun senses that Donghyuck’s down, it’s his job to ignore it or fix it, isn’t it? If Renjun ever felt anything besides carefully constructed amusement and Yangyang-directed-stirrings then Donghyuck would do the same, wouldn’t he?

The bell on the dryer goes off just in time to rescue Donghyuck from his self-imposing destruction of the Positive Boundary in his mind. 

It’s just his luck he forgot to throw his best pair of jeans into the wash. But they’re probably held together with Donghyuck’s thigh sweat at this point, so it’s good that he didn’t risk it. 

He flies out the door, feeling like he can float all the way to the diner, all the way to Jeno.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #37326**

Jeno sits in one of the tables in the back of the restaurant, angling his chair so he can see out the front windows and have a perfect view of the door, just in case he misses the approach. 

Mark, the only waiter on the clock, moves around the diner, collecting ketchup bottles and napkin dispensers onto the long laminate counter. The parking lot is empty, apart from Jeno’s car and the cook’s. 

He’ll give it half an hour, he thinks, but half an hour turns into an hour and a half, with his napkins torn to shreds on the table in front of him and his milkshake half-drunk and melted in its glass.

The sun begins to vanish behind the trees. He watches the sky turn purple-red and counts the seconds between his blinks. 

“Do you want anything else?”

Jeno startles, smacking his knee on the underside of the table. Rubbing it, he looks up, meeting Mark’s impassive gaze. 

“No, not yet.”

“Still waiting?”

If Jeno were to catch the amused uptick of Mark’s lips at the question, he would have to ask if he’s mocking him, but he can’t muster the energy for it. Instead, he tells himself it was a trick of the newly changed lights, or the sunspots dancing in his vision.

“Just for a few more minutes,” Jeno says.

“We close in twenty,” Mark says, and glances at his own wrist. He’s not wearing a watch.

Jeno smiles. It’s the smile Jaemin taught him when they were kids, which screams politeness at an extreme that often makes people wary. 

Mark’s already moved on before he can bite, setting out the ketchup bottles again, now refilled.

The sun dips lower than the mountain and Jeno leaves.

He doesn’t even have the chance to turn his key in the ignition before his phone rings. 

Jeno swears at the sight of Donghyuck’s name flashing over his screen. “Seriously?”

He prepares to repeat himself as he answers, but he’s beat the punch.

" _Is this a joke to you?_ "

Jeno's stunned, the sharp slant in Donghyuck's voice hitting him like the slap of a strong wind. "What?"

" _Is this a joke? Am I?_ " 

Jeno feels the urge to apologize, although he doesn't know what for, although it should be Donghyuck apologizing to _him_ , considering Donghyuck stood _him_ up. He waited for two hours.

" _I waited for two hours!_ " Donghyuck snaps. His voice breaks at the end, and Jeno hears the quiet sound of a huff of breath, the quiet, slow whine of Donghyuck's swallowed cry.

"What?" Jeno asks again. 

He can't find the right question, can't make sense of the conversation, Donghyuck blaming him, taking his own hurt and forming an accusation around it.

"You stood _me_ up," Jeno points out before Donghyuck can bark at him again.

" _Oh, cute,_ " Donghyuck says. " _That's not funny._ "

Jeno grips his cellphone tighter, grinds his teeth. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

“ _Great, ‘cause you’re not._ ”

It’s so childish that it makes Jeno’s head spin. “Is this your attempt at making an excuse for yourself? It’s a pretty awful excuse.”

“ _Call me back when you want to be a man, Jeno._ ”

Jeno’s left with the silence of a call cut short, his heart beating behind his eyes as he stares out his windshield into the night, the sky deep blue. 

  
  


Yangyang is out sick for the day, which means he's probably at home playing video games with his friends who are home for the winter break, and that Jeno has been left to man the gift shop by himself. 

He hasn't seen anyone since he arrived, stomping snow out of the tread of his boots on the front mat. He spends his time watching it melt from his seat behind the register, eyeing the growing puddle. 

Once that's too boring, he'll get up to mop up the mess -- he really will! He just doesn't feel like it now, too preoccupied with turning over his failed date in his head, trying to make sense of it.

His gaze trails away from the entryway, scanning over the perpetually stocked store around him. Little satellite figurines hang on keychains, a tub of plush alien toys sits undisturbed in the corner, as if the Observatory is a knock off Area 51 museum. There's a stack of posters abandoned on the floor, half of them rolled and secured by rubber bands. Whoever was here last had obviously given up on the task. 

He has nothing else to do, so he heaves himself up, stretching before he meanders over to the posters. 

Jeno allows himself one heavy sigh as he starts to roll up the remaining posters, curling his fingers carefully around the edges. They're all creased in the middle from the weight of Yangyang's arm as he leaned on them, Jeno remembers vaguely, gaze flickering over the bold font proclaiming PARALLEL UNIVERSES over the low-quality image of the night sky. 

He should offer to design them some new posters. These look retro in a bad way. 

But there's something that gives him pause before he can continue rolling them. He thumbs over the price sticker -- the low, low price of 3.95, dollar sign omitted.

The direction his head takes borders on insanity, he knows that isn't a word to be taken lightly, or thrown around, but it's what someone might call him if the idea taking shape in his head somehow made it past his lips into the real world. Thoughts like these are only safe in one's head. Safety feels overrated all of a sudden.

Jeno's hand hovers over his pocket before he can stop himself. He rests his other palm flat over the posters as he runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth, imagining what the words would taste like if he bothered to try them out -- would they be sweet, or taste like something he'd wished he'd spit out before trying to swallow? 

"Parallel universes," he tries. 

They taste heavy and metallic, like blood trickling into his mouth from a lip split wide open.

  
  


" _Excuse me?_ "

Jeno’s hands shake, but it’s not from the cold air around him. 

He holds his phone with both of them, Donghyuck on speaker. His eyes stick on the photo he’s drawn up on his screen.

“You’re either not who you say you are,” Jeno repeats, “or there’s something very fucked up going on.”

“ _Yeah, that you’re such an asshole_.”

“Listen,” Jeno says, “you don’t go to my school.”

“ _What?_ ”

Jeno internally argues with himself for a few moments before sending Donghyuck the screenshot. “Check your messages.”

“ _What is this?_ ” Donghyuck asks after a pause. “ _It’s too blurry, I can’t see anything._ ”

“Need glasses?” Jeno asks.

“ _Shut up. Explain_.”

Jeno used to think he liked Donghyuck’s bluntness. “It’s you. Donghyuck. It’s a section in my- _our_ high school’s newsletter, saying that you graduated a year early and are off to a prestigious university on the West Coast.”

Donghyuck swears at him without restraint. All Jeno can do is wait until he’s finished.

“ _If I was at a prestigious university, I definitely wouldn’t have time for whatever this shit is, Jeno_ ,” Donghyuck finally finishes.

Jeno sighs. “This is going to sound...We both went to the diner, right?”

“ _Debatable_.”

“What if we both went,” Jeno continues, “but we couldn’t see each other because we were actually in different places? Different...universes, maybe?”

He steels himself for the inevitable -- Donghyuck cursing Jeno, his parents, and all his future offspring. But it doesn’t come. 

“ _Okay_.”

Jeno stares at his phone as if he could somehow see the real-life version of Donghyuck through it, not merely this pixelated version from three years ago. “Okay?”

“ _Yeah. I’ll look you up, too. It can be like a game -- who has the ugliest catfish life?_ ”

“I’m not catfishing you. And this isn’t a game.”

“ _I’ll look you up_ ,” Donghyuck repeats, resigned.

“You believe me?”

“ _I don’t know. But the universe is weird._ ” That’s why he likes it.

“Universes. Multiple,” Jeno says.

“ _Maybe. Maybe you’ll get away with standing me up after all_ . _It’s a hell of an excuse_.”

It would be. Jeno doesn’t want to consider what it would mean, however, for them to be separated across space, time, and logic. Instead, he diverts his attention to parse out how it could have happened -- what could have connected them with the theoretically insurmountable distance that stretches between them. 

For all the differences they might have (it occurs to him that _everything_ might be different, that the sky might be upside down to Donghyuck and he would have no reason to mention it), it all began when it was raining. 

The rain brought Donghyuck to him. They can start from there.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #9298**

Donghyuck doesn’t wait for the Ranger to roll to a stop in front of his house before he’s rushing out the door. His eyes burn, his pent up emotions bubbling up and threatening to burst out, but if there’s one person he can trust to catch them all, it’s Renjun.

He can dive into the Ranger’s passenger side and tell him everything, finally, and then maybe it’ll all make sense again — Renjun can make it make sense, Renjun can fix this.

But the passenger seat isn’t empty when Donghyuck pries open the door. 

Yangyang smiles down at him from Donghyuck’s usual spot.

“Where’s your shit?” Renjun asks, leaning his forearms on the steering wheel as he peers at Donghyuck from around Yangyang.

He’d left it inside, thinking they could skip classes and escape today, maybe drive out of state and disappear a few days to the coast -- they’ve done it before. 

“I’ll go get it,” Donghyuck says instead of any of that. 

“He looks…”

Donghyuck stops before he’s even made it two feet onto the lawn again. “What?”

“Nothing, man,” Yangyang says. He slips out of the seat -- first Donghyuck thinks maybe he’s making room, but he just peels his jacket off, tossing it onto the floor of the cab.

Something feels like it’s been stolen from Donghyuck. He feels robbed.

It’s a cliche, that Donghyuck sees red before he slams his fist into the side of Yangyang’s jaw, and he hates cliches. Even more, he hates the way Renjun looks at him when his vision clears. Like he doesn’t know him at all.

He doesn’t wait for the argument to come, he runs. When he looks back outside from the comfort of his own living room, head spinning as he leans over the back of the couch, twitches the curtains open, they’re already gone.

He doesn’t return Jeno’s calls that night but sends him a heart emoji as he heads to bed, unable to disappoint another person so soon.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #37326**

Jeno sees the look on Ten’s face as he approaches, trying to interpret the reason behind the furrowed brows, his lips pursed together like there’s something in his mouth he can’t quite chew.

“Everything okay?” Jeno asks.

“We figured out the reading errors, I think,” Ten says, looking down.

Jeno follows his gaze down to the radio scanner in Ten’s hand and his own phone in his. Oh.

“Oh,” Jeno says.

“It’s your phone, I think,” Ten says, “but that’s okay. You’ll get a new one, and that’s cool, right? It might just take a few days.”

“You can’t take my phone,” Jeno says urgently.

“Kids these days,” Ten says with the eye roll that has to accompany a phrase like that. He extended his hand to Jeno, motioning for him to place his phone in his hand.

There is absolutely no way.

Jeno’s breath hitches as he shakes his head. His grip on his phone becomes vice-like -- knuckles whitening as his fingers tighten around it.

Ten’s fond admonishment gives way to annoyance easily. “Jeno, you know how this works.”

“You don’t understand,” Jeno says. He grimaces at the weakness in his voice, the quiet plea to his boss to leave it. He knows he won’t. He knows he can’t.

“I need it,” Jeno tries again. 

It’s not enough. Ten continues staring at him with that incredulous look. Jeno feels his cheeks flush hot under his gaze.

“You’ll have a new one in a few days,” Ten says. He reaches out again.

Jeno looks down at Ten’s palm -- the lines crisscrossing over his skin, the lifeline, the love line. Both are so long -- Jeno’s scared to imagine his own, how short they must be, how Ten taking his phone will steal this possibility away from him forever, how he may never get this chance again.

How he’ll never get Donghyuck again.

Jeno takes a deep breath. He looks up. “Do you think parallel universes exist?”

  
  


Kun takes much less convincing than Ten. 

For the more rational of the two, he has a heart for hopeless romance, including the hopeless, irrational parts of the universe, it seems. He accepts Jeno’s story without any hard evidence -- Jeno’s word is enough, which at once shakes Jeno and warms him inside out. 

They trust him, although Ten’s trust seems begrudging, and at the expense of his life’s work.

Once they get over the fact that he knew what was disrupting the satellite readings this whole time, Kun grins.

“This is more than I could’ve ever hoped for at this job,” he explains. “Another universe? Just in reach? And you connected to it with your phone? Imagine the possibilities.”

Jeno can’t admit he’s imagined them all. His relationship is the extreme long distance. Kun has no idea.

From his place beside him, Ten taps his fingers to Kun’s arm. Kun tilts his head up to look at him.

“What if…” Ten starts. Kun and Jeno both wait patiently for him to gather his thoughts. 

Ten debates himself for a few moments, chewing on the edge of his lower lip. He leans over the desk, opening the binder in front of Kun, and runs his forefinger over a line of data. “What do you think?”

Jeno wouldn’t have been able to follow an excessively scientific explanation, but the telepathy is a whole other thing.

“It could be,” Kun says. 

His eyes light up as Ten points to another data set, making a quiet sound of affirmation that means absolutely nothing to Jeno.

“You saved us from doing something very silly, Jeno,” Kun says at last.

“Look at this,” Ten says, waving his hand in a gesture for Jeno to lean in closer.

Jeno obliges, bracing his hands on the edge of Kun’s messy desk to peer at the papers in front of them. It doesn’t make sense to him still, but he watches Ten trace the lines, the doctor’s hands trembling with some suppressed excitement.

“We thought this was a mistake -- this massive image that the satellite’s been picking up for weeks. It didn’t make sense for anything this large to be here, not with the other data we’ve gotten, but,” Ten pauses to share another look with Kun, and is met with a warm smile. He squeezes Kun’s shoulder. “But this must be your parallel universe, Jeno. Not there one day...there another.”

 _Gone the next_ , Jeno finishes silently.

This is more than his own ridiculous theory. They’re saying he was right -- a parallel universe could exist, just beyond their reach.

So how is he supposed to get to it?

He tunes into Ten and Kun’s conversation just as Kun finishes speaking, his thoughts a loud whirl around his head blocking out their voices.

“-he’ll be here next week. This is the perfect timing, really, as long as he doesn’t get us shut down.”

Ten rubs the back of Kun’s neck, shaking his head. “They won’t shut us down now that we’ve found this.”

“It’ll take some convincing, won’t it?”

“Who better to convince them than the genius, darling of modern astrophysics?”

“Who?” Jeno cuts in.

“Oh,” Ten says. “Haechan. Our new intern. He’ll be here next week.”

  
  


The picture is no bigger than Jeno’s thumb. He zooms in slowly until the image starts growing too pixelated, then he zooms out again.

It’s definitely him, and definitely not him at all. 

Jeno’s never been able to see Donghyuck’s face in the best quality. Only the one, fuzzy photo from the high school newsletter, dated three years ago. He supposes this is better than he could imagine when it comes to seeing Donghyuck, and his breath catches in his throat as he studies every detail of the photograph.

His skin, deep and tan, glows even in the dull professional lighting. Dark hair swept off his face, styled in a cool and mature way that Jeno’s only seen on his Instagram explore feed. His lips are pulled into a small smile, verging on what he can only think of as a haughty smirk, and Jeno feels something dark burrowing in his chest as his gaze lingers on those lips, on his eyes -- his eyes that probably sparkle face to face, those eyes that hold the stars.

It feels wrong.

He locks his phone, lowering it from his face. 

When he thought to look up the new intern, casual jealousy at the thought of a new intern invading his space, he’d had no idea that Haechan would be Donghyuck. But he isn’t, is he?

There’s a building pressure behind his eyes, one that threatens to expose him to Kun, who sits just a few feet away, unsuspecting as he replies to this boy’s email -- this boy that Jeno knows like he knows how to breathe. 

Haechan looks like the sun, but Donghyuck’s all night, all cool laugh and dark jokes. Jeno thinks if he and Donghyuck ever hold hands, Jeno will have to warm him up, make sure he doesn’t waste away. He wonders if he’ll be able to look at Haechan at all, wonders if he’s so bright he’ll blind him.

He takes a deep breath, counting backward from five, and unlocks his phone again. He presses his thumb down onto the photo, saves it to his camera roll.

  
  


“ _Jeno?_ ” Donghyuck asks. 

His name is quiet in Donghuck’s mouth, and Jeno wonders if he’s practiced saying it in the mirror, moving his lips carefully around the syllables, or laying in bed at night, saying it over and over to his dark room like a chant, or a prayer. Jeno has, with Donghyuck’s.

“Yeah?” Jeno murmurs.

“ _What if something happened to you?_ ”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“ _No, I mean,_ ” Donghyuck pauses as he takes a deep breath, “ _what if something happened to you here? What if you’re hurt, or in a coma, or you’ve been kidnapped, or-_ “

Jeno waits, trying to dismiss his ideas as quickly as they come.

“ _What if you’re dead?_ ”

It’s logical, if any of this can be considered rational. He doesn’t know what to say.

“ _There’s only so far we can take this, Jeno,_ ” Donghyuck whispers.

His voice is gentle, wrapping around the words like a cozy blanket, but they’re still so sharp, cutting Jeno to the bone. 

“Then we’ll take it to the end,” Jeno says. 

“ _You’re too optimistic,_ ” Donghyuck murmurs.

No one has ever used optimism as a descriptor for Jeno before. He’s more of a ‘ _the cup is both half full and empty, they mean the same things’_ kind of guy. Only Donghyuck could see that light in him, and he’s however many million light-years away. Maybe it’s foolish, then, how Jeno loves him for it. It doesn’t stop him from loving him anyway, although that’s a dangerous thought that makes his head pound.

“It’s worth the hope.”

Donghyuck chuckles. He doesn’t sound like he means it. “ _And the disappointment?_ ”

Jeno can’t decide. He hopes, though, that this doesn’t break either of them. The possibility of life without Donghyuck feels brittle. 

_Haechan_ , Jeno thinks. But Donghyuck doesn’t have anyone.

Jeno pushes all the confidence he can into his voice, burying the guilt with false self-assurance. “I’m not giving up yet. Are you throwing in the towel, Donghyuck?”

The boy on the other line huffs, his breath puffing loudly into Jeno’s ear. “ _I’m no quitter._ ”

Jeno isn’t either. But he knows when he’s already lost. This time, he’s just too scared to admit it.

  
  


Jeno is used to the many expressions of his best friend, but the stare Jaemin levels at him in one he’s never seen before. He thinks it might initially be concern. Now he would assume Jaemin is pondering whether he had hit his head on the way to the library.

“You have a boyfriend,” Jaemin repeats.

“ _Kind of_ ,” Jeno grumbles. 

“You have a _kind of_ boyfriend,” Jaemin amends, “but he’s in another universe.”

Jeno nods, reluctant.

“But he’s not in another universe,” Jaemin says, “because he’s about to come work with you. But that’s not really him, it’s the version of him in this universe.”

“That’s about it.”

Jaemin breaks his commitment to staring at Jeno to press PRINT. He chews on the idea as the machine whirs to life, spitting out copies into the tray. 

“Wow,” he says.

Jeno agrees. “Yeah.”

“It’s very on brand,” Jaemin says. “Only you would get a boyfriend that long distance.”

“What can I say?” Jeno asks, shrugging. “I like the space.”

He thinks it goes well, but it turns out that Jaemin doesn’t believe him. He knows for sure when Jaemin never brings it up again. So he swallows all the parts he wants to share with him, tucks them away from his eyes. Maybe he’ll forget about it, maybe he’ll think it was a dream.

  
  


It's raining again when Jeno gets to the Observatory, slamming his car door shut and holding his bag over his head as he runs to the door. It's a pretty useless effort. His hair drips water down his temples, and he sucks the droplets off his lips as he shakes himself out just inside the door. He'll have Yangyang mop up the mess it makes on the floor.

"Finally, you're here!" Kun calls from the gift shop. Jeno makes his way around the corner, scanning the building and open cafeteria as he goes -- closed, empty. As usual.

His shoes squeak across the floor until he steps into the carpeted gift shop. It's then that he sees the man for the first time, sees the reddish-brown hair curling in damp strands over the nape of his neck, the flattened hair at the top of his head still maintaining some semblance of the shape of the style it was gelled into that morning. 

He knows him before he turns, holds his breath before he meets his gaze so he won't hyperventilate at the smile small and polite pulled over his lips.

His face is pulled too tight, everything about him carefully crafted into the shape of a man, but Jeno knows him, knows he's just a boy like him. 

"Hi," Jeno says finally, knowing that it's expected of him to greet this stranger who is so familiar to him.

"Hello," Haechan says, "You must be Jeno."

  
  


Haechan is cool on the outside. He holds himself like a man who has always known what he wanted and always known he would get it. 

Jeno hopes it isn't his own delusion to think that he can see the cracks in the stone-like exterior. He hopes he's not lying to himself when he sees the sharp teeth behind his surprised smile when it flashes over his face, however brief. 

Haechan is also a genius. Jeno already knew he'd be smart, but he was in no way prepared for the brain behind that pretty face. 

He tries not to feel too guilty about the way that makes his hands shake when Haechan asks him for help, even if it's just sorting through documents in the messy file cabinets. They're the same age, but Haechan seems so much older, wiser, a man who has experienced the world and come back unimpressed by it. 

"Political science and environmental studies?" Haechan repeats one day, before letting out a long whistle. 

Something in the combination amuses him, makes him crack one of those edged smiles, and he shakes his head where it's bent over his computer. The angle can't be good for his neck. Sometimes he leans back and rolls his head left to right, right to left, stretches his arms out with a low groan, but then hunches over again, lost in the numbers, in the radio waves.

"It's just what I'm interested in," Jeno says, shrugging.

"What do you think about those pipeline protests?"

Jeno's surprised again. His efforts don't reach many people, and to have piqued the curiosity of someone studying all the way on the coast makes his chest flood with hot pride. "I do some work with that. I organized a demonstration at my school a few months ago."

He doesn't stare at the softening of Haechan's features, or the way he leans back in his chair. His eyes briefly catch on the pencil pressed into his lower lip, how it dips into his skin as Haechan surveys him.

“I didn’t think people out here cared about the environment,” Haechan says finally as if he’s finally drawn the conclusion he wants to from Jeno. 

“Looking down on people from rural areas is a little dated,” Jeno says. “I thought you were a more modern guy.”

Haechan’s gaze sparks. That was the answer he wanted, it’s clear. Jeno’s ears burn from the realization of the test he hadn’t known he’d been taking. 

“I was born here,” Haechan reveals. Jeno tries to look surprised, raising both eyebrows. “I know, weird isn’t it? I left when I was ten.”

Jeno’s mouth waters from the new information. His fingers dance toward his pocket to text his mom and ask where his old school pictures are, but then he remembers hiding his phone away with Ten, the effort to conceal the secret they all need to keep from the boy sitting in front of him now. 

His lips catch up to the moment before his brain fully does. “Why’d you go?”

“My dad wanted me and my siblings to live with him,” Haechan says. It’s a simple story, a common one, but the possibilities of his different life make Jeno’s heart hammer hard in his chest. He can feel it in his throat. 

As easy as that, Donghyuck became Haechan and left the state — Jeno realizes he’s never heard Hyuck talk about his father before. 

He’s never heard him talk about anything but stars.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #9298**

It only takes a week before Renjun comes to Donghyuck’s house again, coming all the way to the door. It’s an effort that makes Donghyuck’s heart pound, but no more than the serious look on Renjun’s face.

Now, Donghyuck lays in the bed of Renjun’s truck. Warmth spreads down his arm from where it’s pressed against Renjun’s. Everything else is cold. The night sky hangs heavy over them, the moon falls on his chest like a weight. He wants to reach up and grab it.

“Is Yangyang okay?” He asks.

“No permanent damage,” Renjun says. “He’ll be fine.”

Donghyuck thinks he says, “Good,” but it comes out so soft he might have just thought it instead. He knows he should talk. He should tell Renjun everything, especially to explain why he decked his almost-boyfriend on his front lawn like some sort of animal possessed.

Renjun raises his arm, finger extended to point into the sky. “Arcturus.”

Donghyuck follows the line of Renjun’s arm, over the crook of his elbow. He tilts his head and closes one eye, so that the fourth-brightest star rests on the tip of Renjun’s nail.

Renjun’s breath puffs over his temple. “I’ve never had to beg before.”

He wants him to talk. Donghyuck closes his eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just start. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“I fell in love, I think.”

He can’t look at Renjun, so he tries to imagine his expression. He might be staring in disbelief, he might roll his eyes, he might-

Renjun quiets his concern, touching his fingers under Donghyuck’s chin until he lifts his face to meet Renjun’s gaze. It’s nothing but warmth.

“Are those stars or war in your eyes, Hyuck?” Renjun asks.

Donghyuck’s not sure. He’d be blinded by either.

“Jaemin?” Renjun presses.

Dongyhuck hasn’t seen Jaemin in weeks. He used to think he could love him, but he knows now that he’d never be able to accept that kind of love, the kind that would leave him undone. Jeno’s different. If he leaves him, he’ll make sure Donghyuck can carry himself first.

“You don’t know him.”

It can only be a sigh of relief that Renjun exhales, his breath hanging icy in the air.

It takes some coaxing, but Donghyuck urges him up and into the cab of the Ranger again, only just realizing the extent of the cold.

After cranking the heater, Renjun rolls down the window, dangling a cigarette out so it doesn’t ash on his already less than pristine interior.

Donghyuck holds his hands in front of the air vents, wiggling his fingers as his joints thaw out, aching. “Are you mad?”

Renjun almost laughs – Donghyuck can see where it catches in his chest before he releases it. “We’re not twelve. You’re allowed to keep things from me.”

“Shit,” Donghyuck says, “I could’ve had secrets for the past seven years?”

“Please. You have secrets.” Renjun doesn’t sound any less amused.

And Donghyuck was right after all, when he thought that Renjun can fix everything. Already, his shoulders relax from weeks of tension – not even time could have done that.

“You should tell him,” Renjun says, “whoever it is.”

“It’s complicated.”

“With you, it’d have to be.”

“Are you hungry?”

The deflection is noted and, shockingly, accepted. Donghyuck will have to write a wordy thank you letter to Renjun’s parents for raising such a polite kid. He’ll leave out all the dull spots, make Renjun in a perfect, shiny image. That’s how he glows now, like Donghyuck’s personal god in the driver’s seat.

Renjun buckles his seatbelt. “Burgers?”

Donghyuck grins. “If you’re paying.”

Renjun waits for him to get buckled, too, before rumbling back onto the road. In the dark, they should be able to see oncoming headlights for miles, but the curves in the road make it dangerous. He speeds down the road anyway, wind whipping Donghyuck’s hair into his eyes.

“You don’t have to be alone, you know!” Renjun shouts over the sound. He always has to get the last word in.

Donghyuck just smiles, another secret he’ll keep to himself. 

He’s never been alone.

  
  


**UNIVERSE #37326**

It only takes a week for Haechan to pull Jeno into orbit.

Haechan never leaves the Observatory except to sleep. Some nights he abandons even that -- stuck on the problem Jeno knows how to solve yet refuses to. 

Instead, Jeno starts staying longer at the gift shop, counting the minutes until Haechan comes out to talk to him. It’s rare, at first, but soon they both neglect their work to chat. It’s a welcome distraction from the monotony of performing customer service to no one. 

He’s been leaving his phone at home to avoid any mistakes, in a mini-cage that mimics the structure of the Observatory itself and blocks in the radio waves. Kun built it for him to stall until Haechan leaves, until they can figure out the business of parallel universes without outside intervention.

So he waits, and he grows fond of Haechan, and he reminds himself every day that this is just temporary. In a few weeks, maybe months, Haechan will leave, too, and return to the coast to finish his education at that prestigious university.

It’s harder when he’s home.

He wishes, sometimes, that he’d left Haechan alone altogether. 

When he calls Donghyuck at night, asks him, “Tell me about your day,” he sees Haechan’s smile, Haechan’s hands fluttering in the air as he recounts his wildest tales.

So he starts to ask, “Have you found me?”

It’s not the best greeting. Only half a dozen calls go by before Donghyuck snaps.

“ _What’s the rush? Why I need to find you?_ ” he cries into the phone. 

Jeno’s mouth goes dry. He wants to tell him, all at once, he wants to say _I found you and you’re beautiful_ , but it would be wrong. For once, he wants to do the right thing.

He takes the next three days off. When he returns to the Observatory, Renjun and Yangyang sit audience to Haechan’s stories, to his wide gestures. From the doorway, Jeno can see what it looks like when he’s the one sitting on the other side. He’s not sure how pleasant a picture it makes.

“Is Jaemin lurking around?” Jeno asks by way of greeting, assuming that if Renjun’s around, that means Jaemin must have dragged him by to visit. Not that Jaemin has visited before.

Renjun shakes his head. “I haven’t seen him for a few weeks.”

“Oh,” Jeno says.

“We’ve both been busy,” Renjun says, and he’s not looking at Jeno anymore, his attention caught up on his old high school friend, who leans against the counter, and offers Jeno a small wave. 

Busy. He gets it.

 _Have you found me yet?_ He thinks. 

He shoos Renjun and Haechan out of the gift shop if only to reclaim his spot behind the register. Yangyang wanders away, too, like a ghost.

It’s quiet, then, and Jeno realizes his pocket is heavy from his phone, a forgotten stowaway. He checks it discreetly, like a kid hiding their cell from their teacher, even though he’s alone.

 _Call me ASAP_.

He chews on it. It’s impossible right then, so he waits until he’s on his way out, crossing the wide gray expanse of the parking lot.

“Hey, are you okay?” He asks first.

Donghyuck doesn’t wait for him to sit down.

“ _Jeno_ ,” Donghyuck says, “ _I love you._ ”

They’re such simple words. Jeno wonders in how many universes he gets to hear Donghyuck say them.

Across the parking lot, Haechan lifts his hand in a wave. His smile is gold. The sun bounces off of him. He’s so bright that Jeno is forced to look away. 

First, he waves back. 

There are so many possibilities. There are so many choices. He has to make one.

“I love you, too,” Jeno says. 

Donghyuck’s breathless, amazed laugh sinks into Jeno’s chest and stays there.

He only has so many chances, he thinks, and knowing the outcome would make it all pointless. 

“So,” Jeno says, “tell me about your day.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> you can find me on twitter @jpseudy :)


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